Santa Clara has more standalone data centers than any other California city — 55 in operation and three in the pipeline, according to the city. Demand is growing as more people use the internet and digitally demanding technology advances, such as artificial intelligence. With data centers providing the city with millions in revenue, officials are questioning impacts to water and the electrical grid.

Officials said city-owned power utility Silicon Valley Power has lower electricity rates compared to PG&E, a plus for data centers that need reliable energy, and the reason so many companies have planted their data centers in the city. Santa Clara also has a strong fiber optic network near Central Expressway, where most of the data centers are located, making it easier for more data to travel faster.

“Santa Clara is home to an extraordinary array of high tech companies and we have a competitive advantage,” City Manager Jovan Grogan said at a May 20 joint meeting of the City Council and Planning Commission.

Reena Brilliot, Santa Clara’s director of economic development and sustainability, said the city receives $40.9 million annually from its data centers through property and sales tax, as well as Silicon Valley Power payments.

“We as a city need to strategically go after developments that are supporting our city’s fiscal sustainability … and data centers are a very tangible source of economic support,” Brilliot said.

Elected officials raised concerns with the amount of land, electricity and water used by data centers, as well as the diesel generators they rely on for backup power. Planning Commissioner Priya Cherukuru said the city is committing too much land to industrial uses such as data centers and not enough for other uses that would benefit residents, such as housing or parks.

“The controversy surrounding data centers stems from the complex interplay between economic development, environmental sustainability and the needs of local communities,” Cherukuru told San José Spotlight. “The growing reliance on data centers for modern digital infrastructure necessitates finding a balance between these competing interests.”

Cherukuru, who is the executive director of space planning for Stanford Health Care, said Santa Clara needs to conduct a deeper study on the strain data centers put on city resources, such as electricity and water.

Data centers use water to cool their densely packed servers. Ahmed Aly, the city’s principal engineer for water and sewer utilities, said more data centers are starting to use water efficient cooling systems, and 31 data centers in the city use recycled water.

As for electricity, Silicon Valley Power has been working to increase its transmission capacity to meet increasing demands, namely from its data centers. Chief Operating Officer Nico Procos said the utility’s sales have grown 25% from 2019 to 2023.

“(On) growth and expansion, it is driven by data centers,” Procos said. “We’ve had requests to add 500 megawatts of load, so that’s growing from our current peak of about 720.”

City spokesperson Janine De la Vega confirmed the city’s electrical grid caps new data centers. She said Silicon Valley Power has multiple expansion projects to meet the current demand, which are estimated to finish by 2029.

Commissioner Eric Crutchlow questioned the environmental impacts of the diesel backup generators, and staff told him the generators are the industry standard for reliable, resilient emergency energy. Grogan said most of the city’s critical infrastructure has diesel backup generators.

“One of the reasons frankly as an industry that we have chosen it, and I know cities do, is in a major catastrophe, you can find a diesel mechanic,” Grogan said. “(With) a lot of the current emerging tech, there are significant continuation of business concerns.”

Councilmember Karen Hardy said improvements to the city’s electrical grid have been made possible because of the city’s data centers and technology industry, and that data centers are becoming more efficient with their energy, water and space.
Hardy said the city has turned away proposed data centers because of electrical grid limitations, and there won’t be any new data centers beyond those that’ve already been approved by Silicon Valley Power.

“When people rely on the internet, they don’t see all the underlying ones and zeroes, literally … the electricity that has to occur to make that happen,” Hardy told San José Spotlight. “There’s so many positives to the residents that they don’t realize because of that redundancy built into the system that data centers need.”

Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at sakura@sanjosespotlight.com or @SakuCannestra on X.

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Sen. Chris Murphy said Thursday that Democrats will demand a vote on an amendment prohibiting the president and other officials from profiting off stablecoins as part of the GENIUS Act, a cryptocurrency bill that would regulate stablecoins. He announced the plan at a news conference with Rep. Sam Liccardo and Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Elizabeth Warren.

Liccardo said Republican lawmakers are privately disgusted with Trump’s crypto activities.

“Several of my Republican colleagues are willing to acknowledge that this is horrific, whether they’re willing to do so publicly is entirely a different question,” he said.

The amendment is unlikely to become law. But it could put Republicans on the record over the president’s memecoin gambit, Murphy said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Trump’s decision to participate in the memecoin gala and his crypto activities.

“Stablecoin legislation should be passed on a bipartisan basis,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told NOTUS in a statement. “President Trump is dedicated to making America the crypto capital of the world and revolutionizing our digital financial technology. His assets are in a trust managed by his children, and there are no conflicts of interest.”

On Monday, Democratic senators agreed to move forward the GENIUS Act, which previously failed a floor vote earlier this month. While Democratic senators said that the text would be significantly amended before it reached a floor vote again, the addition of an amendment openly limiting the president’s action might derail the passage of this bill.

Trump and his crypto czar, David Sacks, have spoken in support of the GENIUS Act, saying the stablecoin industry could bring billions of dollars to the American economy.

Democrats have condemned Trump’s exclusive dinner with buyers of his cryptocurrency due to the anonymous nature of many digital assets. Independent analysis of the buyers of Trump’s coin found that most of them likely live outside the U.S. The lawmakers called on Trump to release the list of attendees.

Democrats said Trump’s incursion into cryptocurrency, where anonymous donors can directly donate to the president without leaving any paper trail, is a sign the administration is embracing political corruption and a threat to democracy.

“It’ll be interesting to see what some of the Senate Republicans do if presented with a really simple amendment: Should the ethics provisions in this bill that already applied to members of Congress and to everybody that works for Donald Trump also apply to Donald Trump?” Murphy said.

Samuel Larreal is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and San José Spotlight.

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Mountain View-based company GovernmentGPT filed 90 California Public Records Act requests with multiple cities across the Bay Area for emails from residents addressed to mayors, councilmembers and city clerks from 2020 to 2023. The goal is to create an artificial intelligence tool that can easily summarize a resident’s thoughts based on public comments. AI experts have raised concerns about privacy, consent and ethics when training an AI with this data.

San José Spotlight found requests sent to San Jose, Santa Clara, Mountain View and Milpitas in late 2023 and early 2024. Three cities received a short request asking for documents, while Milpitas received a 10-page request.

Rich Tran, former Milpitas mayor and part of the GovernmentGPT team, is helping spearhead one of the company’s projects, CivicVoice, which documents and summarizes public comment at meetings.

Tran did not respond to requests for comment.

GovernmentGPT CEO and founder Raj Abhyanker, a patent lawyer, told San José Spotlight the company specializes in civic AI and would be providing a service by making public participation easier. 

He said they wanted to record residents’ feelings during the COVID-19 pandemic and learn what issues were at the top of people’s minds, adding they aren’t planning to seek records outside the pandemic timeframe.

Abhyanker said the company has a handful of other AI tools, such as CivicVoice. All of these tools are meant to make government work more efficient.

“Cities operate very hatefully, bureaucratically and inefficiently with bloated budgets, and they need major reform and overhaul of how they operate,” Abhyanker told San José Spotlight. “They need less layers between citizens and decision making.”

Alarm bells are ringing

Abhyanker wrote in his request to Milpitas the goal is to create a “ChatGPT-like AI interface” to identify the most pressing issues for residents and streamline municipal operations.

Ahmed Banafa, an engineering professor at San Jose State University and expert on AI technologies, said he lives in Milpitas and was shocked that any of his communications with the city could have been used to train an AI model. Banafa wants to know if his emails are being used, especially if the company plans to make money from the AI.

“It’s freedom of information, not freedom of selling my data, not monetizing my data, that’s never been the case,” Banafa told San José Spotlight.

Abhyanker wrote in the records request the company plans to send this to every city in the state. But he told San José Spotlight the company doesn’t plan to sell the data.

Banafa added only using emails limits the amount of insight an AI model can glean because it overlooks public comments at meetings, from phone calls and online.

“I’m surprised the cities are sitting on this and not making a fuss about this. We have attorneys at the cities, we have counsels, they can question that,” Banafa said. “I’m a citizen of Milpitas, I’ve been here for 30 years, and I don’t want this to happen to my emails or my communications with the city.”

Santa Clara Councilmember Kevin Park, who has worked as an engineer in multiple AI companies for the past decade, said the proposition could be dangerous and likely inaccurate, as it would be easy to taint the training data. It would also take a lot of effort to clean the data due to the sheer number of topics  governments deal with.

Park also said the lack of AI regulation means there is little to no repercussion if the product causes harm.

“If making a critical mistake is more than a hand slap, then people will be careful, but right now, what happens if AI is incorrect?” Park told San José Spotlight. “The short answer is this is a new territory, we really don’t have regulations around that.”

Not only are there a lack of regulations, but there are ethical issues with training an AI on emails from residents. Brian Green, director of technology ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics in Santa Clara University, said the company is exploiting the residents who wrote the emails and the city employees who had to manually redact the private information.

He added these types of AIs need lots of data to train off of, so it’s possible that the company is intending to sell the data rather than build the AI tool itself.

Green said this situation is likely outside the scope of the California Public Records Act and federal Freedom of Information Act, as the writers of those laws didn’t conceive of public records being used in this way.

“That’s not what those emails were intended for in the first place,” Green told San José Spotlight. “These are legally accessible but that doesn’t mean they should have access to them.”

Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at sakura@sanjosespotlight.com or @SakuCannestra on X.

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Artificial intelligence tools have been growing in popularity as cities like San Jose use it to improve road safety or translate public meetings. But the technology is still plagued with misinformation problems, prompting questions about how elected officials can use AI responsibly — especially in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Santa Clara Councilmember Kelly Cox acknowledged using ChatGPT to look for possible holes in legal contracts regarding the FIFA 2026 World Cup games at a Feb. 11 meeting. Mayor Lisa Gillmor said she “loved” ChatGPT when she used it to research possible competitors to merchandiser Fanatics during a March 11 meeting.

Gillmor and Cox did not respond to requests for comment.

Councilmember Kevin Park, who has worked as an engineer in multiple AI companies for the past decade, said most people don’t understand how AI technologies work. He cautioned against governments partnering with AI companies, who are more interested in selling the technology than protecting the public. If an official doesn’t know enough about a subject to determine whether AI’s response is accurate, the person could make a decision based on false information.

“AI is not trying to answer the question, AI is going to try to give you the most likely response and the most likely response really depends on how it was trained,” Park told San José Spotlight.

Some of his colleagues are less worried about the use of AI tools during public meetings. Councilmember Suds Jain said he likens ChatGPT to searching on Google, which he does sometimes during meetings or public discussions to get more information.

“I firmly believe the world is moving in this direction, that we have these AI assistants that help us with almost everything,” Jain told San José Spotlight. “They’re huge productivity enhancers and I don’t think banning somebody from Googling at the dias is going to serve the public.”

Mindy Romero, director for the University of Southern California’s Center for Inclusive Democracy, said AI technologies are advancing fast, making conversations about responsibility and ethical implementation even more necessary.

Councilmembers usually receive official information from city employees, but can seek more information elsewhere, such as asking residents or doing their own research online. When officials use AI tools such as ChatGPT, Romero said they have to gauge how much they’re weighing it compared to other sources of information.

“If AI is used or other information sources are used, how much of that should be integrated into what staff is doing,” Romero told San José Spotlight. “Is it additive or is it replacement?”

Rich Robinson, a lawyer and political consultant, said it’s common for councilmembers to not fully rely on city staff and to do their own research, but emphasized AI tools cannot replace expert advice. He referred to a situation in 2023 when two lawyers were reprimanded for using AI to write a legal brief, and the AI cited six cases that didn’t exist.

“The fact is, when you’re talking about legal issues and things like that, you have to have evidence and you have to have data,” Robinson told San José Spotlight. “ChatGPT can be a secondary source I suppose, but you have to be able to back up whatever ChatGPT says. You can’t just take it at face value.”

Governments have been discussing how to responsibly use AI tools. San Jose brought together more than 250 public agencies last year to form the Government AI Coalition to further develop guardrails for using AI and implemented its own AI policies in 2023. Santa Clara is part of that coalition.

Santa Clara spokesperson Janine De la Vega said the city established its own AI best practices work group more than a year ago and expects to finalize a policy later this year.

“We are supportive of the appropriate use of AI in the workplace and are in the process of assessing appropriate protocols and safeguards as the technology develops,” De la Vega told San José Spotlight. “AI has and will continue to revolutionize our world.”

Each person has a different understanding of AI and some people are more tech savvy than others — including elected officials. Romero suggested officials could disclose to the public when they use AI for research, and said AI tools used in government need to be more scrutinized. Still, she cautioned against ignoring AI outright, as it could become a helpful tool if implemented thoughtfully.

“We’re talking about something enormously important, we’re talking about decisions to be made for the public good,” Romero told San José Spotlight. “I think we all want our decision makers to be using accurate and complete information.”

Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at sakura@sanjosespotlight.com or @SakuCannestra on X.

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Silicon Valley Congressman Sam Liccardo introduced a bill Thursday that would bar Trump and other public officials from promoting stocks and cryptocurrency endeavors from which they stand to financially benefit, introducing legislation that would open the door to civil and criminal action against those seeking to personally enrich themselves while holding public office.

It’s a longshot for now, given Republican control over Congress and the White House. But the freshman congressman said it’s important for the future.

“I think everyone scratched their head when President Trump started this pump and dump scheme, asking the question, ‘Why isn’t that prohibited?’” Liccardo said. “So let’s make sure, at the very least, it doesn’t happen again.”

Less than three days before Trump took the oath of office for the second time, he put out a call to supporters on social media: “GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW.” In the hours that followed, Trump’s meme cryptocurrency coin exploded in value — before cratering and causing investors to collectively lose over $2 billion in value.

A day after the Trump Organization launched the Trump coin, it issued a Melania meme coin, which similarly saw its valuation tank in recent weeks.

Trump and those who facilitated the debut of his meme coin generated nearly $100 million in trading fees alone, Reuters first reported, and the president has continued to promote the cryptocurrency since becoming a public official once again.

Liccardo likened Trump’s meme coin to similar endeavors from global leaders like the Central African Republic’s meme coins and Argentine President Javier Milei’s promotion of a now defunct coin that has landed him at the center of a corruption probe.

“What all these have in common is that they open public officials to the influence of others who are capable of buying millions, or in this case, hundreds of millions of dollars of financial assets to influence the outcome of decisions,” Liccardo said. “And some of those individuals, they live offshore and have very strong interests in conflict with the interests of our country.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Liccardo’s Modern Emoluments and Malfeasance Enforcement, or MEME, Act has over a dozen Democratic co-sponsors and would disallow the president, senior White House officials and members of Congress — including their spouses and children — from issuing or endorsing any financial asset.

While laws like the Hatch Act exist to bar officials from endorsing products or services while serving the public, such regulations are often toothless.

In 2020, while serving as a senior adviser to her father, Ivanka Trump endorsed a can of Goya beans in an apparent violation of the Hatch Act. The White House declined to discipline Ivanka Trump, and the next day, her father posed for a photo with Goya products spread across his desk in the Oval Office.

“Regardless of whether there is any untoward influence or not, this is the use of a public office for personal financial gain, and public office doesn’t belong to the office holder,” Liccardo said. “It belongs to the American people. So this is an abuse of power, regardless of whether there’s corruption or not.”

Liccardo’s bill avoids simply relying on the Department of Justice to reign in the president and other officials should they violate the proposed regulations, paving the way for civil complaints from those who may have been harmed by purchasing such assets.

The bill faces incredibly long odds in a Republican-controlled Congress that has shown little appetite for reining in executive authority.

Last year Oversight Chair James Comer and then-Rep. Katie Porter pushed bipartisan legislation to ratchet up presidential transparency by mandating the disclosure of their personal tax returns and money received overseas. Comer promptly stopped pushing his own legislation after Trump won in November.

Republican leadership in Congress has signaled interest, but not urgency, in tackling cryptocurrency legislation, and several GOP lawmakers — who themselves trade various meme coins — balked at the idea of strictly regulating the industry.

“I don’t expect this to get out of committee next week,” Liccardo said. “On the other hand … as (Trump) continues his failing and flailing in running this government, I would expect his poll ratings to continue to drop as they have over the last couple weeks and eventually as the poll ratings continue to dive more and more wobbly kneed Republicans may get a dose of courage to decide it’s time to make corruption criminal again.”

Mark Alfred is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and San José Spotlight.

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Mahan made the declaration in Miami, Florida Thursday during a discussion about AI in government at the Knight Foundation’s annual Knight Media Forum. He compared YouTube view counts of the San Jose City Council’s first Spanish meeting broadcast last May with 64 views and a later one last August with 307 views, when the city started using the generative AI tool Wordly for translation. The software made simultaneous English and Spanish language broadcasts available for the first time in the Bay Area’s largest city, after issues providing interpreters at times forced Spanish speakers to watch meetings from a separate room.

Mahan said Wordly has removed the city’s dependence on a “very expensive and cumbersome system” of “human beings” at great taxpayer expense.

“People can now access any public meeting, pick the right channel for their language — and two-way communication — with real-time translation that’s incredibly accurate,” Mahan said at the forum.

City Clerk Toni Taber told San José Spotlight an expanded time frame suggests a larger increase of about 876% when comparing view counts of the first Spanish broadcast last May with a more recent one in September.

Though viewership isn’t consistent on YouTube. The council’s English and Spanish broadcasts are all archived on YouTube, where view counts can depend on what topics are covered at a particular meeting. The archived Spanish broadcast of a different council meeting last September had only 63 views as of Thursday afternoon. View counts can also grow in the days after a meeting.

Mahan’s remarks are raising eyebrows. Lucila Ortiz, political director at the community group Working Partnerships USA, said Wordly has made language errors during council discussions when scores of Latino residents have showed up to participate. She cites a Feb. 4 council discussion of 988, a national hotline people in mental health crises can call for help.

“The interpretation and script on the screen kept saying ‘908.’ If anyone was out there reading the script they would definitely be reading — and possibly dialing — the wrong number,” Ortiz told San José Spotlight.

Ortiz also said when community activists with the group known as LUNA identified themselves at the same meeting, Wordly kept interpreting the organization’s name literally, into the word “moon.” The group’s name stands for Latinos United for a New America.

“I don’t think we should get rid of it, but context can be lost when we use AI,” Ortiz said. “This shouldn’t be a replacement for human interpreters who can catch that context.”

Taber said human interpreters are brought into meetings when it’s determined they’re needed.

“I’m the one that hires them and brings them in,” Taber told San José Spotlight. “The Rules committee may direct me to bring them in, city staff may ask me to if they think it’s needed. I’ll also ask city staff if there is an item they think will have a need for in-person interpreters. We are working with our tech people to have the Wordly AI broadcast over interpreter headsets, so that may reduce the need for in-person interpreters further.”

Mahan’s spokesperson Tasha Dean said consistent improvement is the nature of generative AI.

“The technology gets better each and every time we use it,” Dean told San José Spotlight. “While both human and AI translators can make mistakes, this technology can be used at any and all public meetings regardless of scale, something that would be cost-prohibitive for the city using solely human translators. This means more people can access more information more of the time — which is a win for civic engagement and brings diverse voices to the table.”
Ortiz agrees technology such as Wordly can be useful, but stops short of crediting it for increased participation from Spanish-speaking residents.

“I definitely have seen a lot more civic engagement and interest. I definitely think there’s a correlation, but would not jump to say it’s a causation,” Ortiz said. “There have been some items that recently went before the city council that are of high interest to the Spanish speaking community. For example, there were issues around fast-food workers and a resolution of immigrant rights as a response to (President Donald Trump’s) administration.”

Contact Brandon Pho at brandon@sanjosespotlight.com or @brandonphooo on X.

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Gabriel Castaneda, co-founder of CollegeBot.AI, said the students launched the artificial intelligence platform as a startup company to help students navigate through their class requirements and address long wait times for face-to-face appointments with university advisors. The five students, who beat out 35 other teams at the 2024 Silicon Valley Innovation Challenge event held at SJSU on Dec. 3, attracted not just students but venture capitalists and angel investors.

“At first it was just to allow students easy access to information from the school’s website because it’s really bloated with all these different resources and drop down menus. It’s difficult to find stuff,” Castaneda, an operations and supply chain management major, told San José Spotlight. “An AI interface retrieves all that information using natural language, so students can ask it like they’re talking to another person.”

Castaneda, who graduates in 2026, said they began building the platform over the summer and watched it rise in popularity as fall 2024 classes began. The company has about 20,000 students using the site, with hopes that more will find the app through marketing and word-of-mouth, Castaneda added.

“We figured, AI is changing all of technology, right? The school is not going to catch up to it quickly enough so why don’t we do something about it,” he told San José Spotlight.

CollegeBot.AI, similar to other popular AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google’s recently-developed Gemini, can answer questions regarding academic advising, class syllabuses and more for SJSU colleges students.

Business entrepreneurship major Nicolaus Hilleary, who graduates this year, said they received more than $500,000 in funding from venture capitalists and angel investors. He said they were able to connect with venture capital firms through team member Kai Zhao, a mathematics major.

Hilleary said Zhao had connections to some venture firms in California with Chinese backgrounds.

“We were able to meet with a lot of either venture firms or angel investors and pitched them our idea,” Hilleary told San José Spotlight. “Obviously you get rejected from some people, right? You have to knock on 100 doors before one opens for you, so it’s definitely been a long process this semester.”

Leo Wang, founder of PreAngel Fund, said he chose to invest in the company because it gives students academic resources at a speed comparable to those offered at private universities.

“Maybe you have simple questions that the AI bot can answer without having to go talk with an (advisor) directly,” he told San José Spotlight. “To avoid those small talks and greetings, AI is much more efficient.”

CollegeBot.AI wasn’t the only artificial intelligence-powered innovation to win an award at the 2024 Silicon Valley Innovation Challenge, as three out of five winning teams featured AI-based innovations.

Anuradha Basu, an SJSU business professor and organizer of the Silicon Valley Innovation Challenge, said CollegeBot.AI has strong potential — especially with the growing demand for accessible academic resources.

“AI is the disruptive and transformative technology of the moment, and it is going to affect every single industry and every single business. So, it’s not surprising that young SJSU entrepreneurs want to build businesses using AI,” she told San José Spotlight.

The company’s long-term goal is securing a contract with SJSU and expand to campuses nationwide.

Accounting major Glerys Gonzalez said she met “the boys” in September and asked to join the team because she wanted to grow the company. Starting as a marketing intern, Gonzalez is now employed as the CollegeBot.AI digital marketer.

“This isn’t just a project, we’re an established company,” she told San José Spotlight.

Contact Vicente Vera at vicente@sanjosespotlight.com or follow @VicenteJVera on X.

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Councilmember Peter Ortiz has proposed a policy to restrict the sale and use of “algorithmic devices” to set rents or manage home occupancy levels in the city. The proposal comes after San Francisco passed a similar rule in light of the Justice Department suing software provider RealPage for allegedly allowing its partnering landlords to coordinate housing prices by using private data.

“We know about 66% of multi-family units are managed by property owners who use this software, so they essentially utilize the software to artificially inflate rent,” Ortiz told San José Spotlight. “We should not allow property owners to plot against their renters.”

Software provided by RealPage undermines the free housing market by offering property owners AI-powered tools and data that gives them an unprecedented advantage against smaller landlords, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said, and this could lead to increased rents and home prices.

SV@Home Policy Director Mathew Reed said local landlords who manage less than a handful of properties and can’t afford the emerging tech will be undermined by larger corporations who can now analyze their entire business model at the click of a button.

“The big players are not only potentially working with each other, but they’re likely cutting out good actors in the market,” he told San José Spotlight. “It’s hurting the smaller and mid-size property owners and renters as well.”

Private equity firm Thomas Bravo purchased RealPage for nearly $10.2 million in 2020 just months after the software company announced its now-controversial AI revenue management tool that “unlocks hidden yields in multifamily assets.”

Ortiz said he became concerned about the software’s potential use in San Jose after law enforcement officials and renters across the country began accusing RealPage of allowing property owners to collude in price fixing with its software. His proposed policy to restrict use of such software in setting rent prices and occupancy levels is being analyzed by city employees before it comes to the City Council.

Sacred Heart Policy Director Matt King told councilmembers he is supportive of the proposed legislation.

RealPage did not respond to a request for comment.

Anil Babbar, California Apartment Association senior vice president of local public affairs, told councilmembers there is no evidence such software tools have impacted San Jose.

“Beyond the lack of data to explain the ban, this memo would require additional staff time to enforce the ban — a ban we don’t know exactly how we would enforce because we don’t know if a rent increase or decrease is impacted by the tool or the owners own decisions,” Babbar said at a Sept. 4 meeting.

A California Apartment Association spokesperson told San José Spotlight they had no comment beyond the initial statement given to councilmembers.
Huascar Castro, housing and transportation director for Working Partnerships USA, said the precedent surrounding the multiple antitrust complaints and lawsuits should be enough for San Jose to consider the policy. Thousands of renters are subjected to housing price hikes because of the latest property management technology used by large landlords, he said, and it shouldn’t be allowed to happen in San Jose.

“This is an opportunity for San Jose to do its part given the mass amounts of housing stock that is controlled by corporate real estate,” Castro told San José Spotlight.

Contact Vicente Vera at vicente@sanjosespotlight.com or follow @VicenteJVera on X, formerly known as Twitter.

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Though AI only recently entered the public vocabulary — with the search term peaking in popularity just last month since Google began tracking the data in 2004 — experts told San José Spotlight the technology has been in our reach for decades. And, with NASDAQ-listed tech firm Couchbase uprooting its Santa Clara headquarters in favor of San Jose, the city has an opportunity to helm the next generation of innovators in Silicon Valley.

Couchbase Chief People Officer Fidelma Butler said the new office represents an ideal blend of innovation plus opportunity for the company’s next phase of growth, and being in San Jose also keeps Couchbase at the epicenter of AI innovation.

“Our commitment to San Jose isn’t just about a new office — it’s about continuing to foster an ecosystem where we can collaborate, engage with top talent, meet with industry partners and enable our world-class team to play to win in our industry,” Butler told San José Spotlight. “We’re excited to contribute to and draw inspiration from the vibrant community here as we continue to develop AI-powered database solutions that will shape the future of technology globally.”

San Jose State University professor and AI expert Ahmed Banafa said city leaders have a plan to attract such companies — and welcoming AI service provider Couchbase along with X, formerly Twitter, employees from the shuttered San Francisco office is an advantage. Both companies plan to plant new roots in Santana Row.

“(Incentives) can be done in many ways. For example, zoning has to be friendly to tech so it’s not difficult to convert buildings into offices,” Banafa told San José Spotlight. “Tax breaks are another route, partnerships with universities like San Jose State to bring talent in case companies need folks.”

City officials say San Jose is home to the largest number of AI patents filed in the nation, with almost 9,800 filed at the Silicon Valley U.S. Patent & Trademark Office in San Jose.

Private funding from venture capitalists  that helped bring the computer revolution to life at the turn of the century is still ramping up for AI.

Among the earliest forms of computer artificial intelligence is predictive AI, which can find patterns and make predictions based on statistical data provided by the user. This has evolved into what is known as generative AI, which is used by white-collar workers to create writing prompts and text-to-images using services such as ChatGPT, Joint Venture Silicon Valley CEO Russell Hancock said.

“It really does appear to be the next way and Silicon Valley goes with these waves,” he told San José Spotlight. “There’s periods of discovery, prototyping, ramping up into production and then the technology becomes a commodity, very often that’s when the (company) location shifts to another place.”

Joint Venture Silicon Valley reported in its 2024 index that venture capital funding to Silicon Valley and San Francisco companies totaled more than $30 billion last year — compared to $55 million at the peak of the dot-com boom in 2000.

AI companies overall experienced a 14% funding decline, but companies working on generative AI saw a 220% increase in venture capital investments, from $4.1 billion to $9.4 billion.

“Predictive AI evolved into generative AI, which allowed modern AI systems to become ubiquitously available,” ScoreData CEO Vas Bhandarkar told San José Spotlight. “With the advent of generative AI in November 2022, humans will be able to not only access AI through mobile devices and desktop, but also access infinite sources of knowledge and summarize them.”
While ChatGPT developer Open AI remains headquartered in San Francisco, Hancock said San Jose’s fortunes have changed — including separate offices in Santana Row for X employees, who will also be sharing offices with Palo Alto-based xAI, an artificial intelligence company also owned by Elon Musk.

“San Jose is the heart of Silicon Valley, with a thriving ecosystem of talent, infrastructure and research that is appealing to companies and entrepreneurs, including AI companies,” San Jose Economic Development and Cultural Affairs Director Nanci Klein told San José Spotlight. “Quite simply, San Jose is known as one of the world’s great innovation clusters to live and work.”

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Bay Area companies like Google, Meta and Zoom reportedly laid off workers focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, policies. Cost cutting measures and mounting criticism from conservative commentators, including former President Donald Trump, have also made expanding such policies difficult just years after DEI became a top priority for companies focusing on improving the culture for their workforce.

“You’ve got companies on both sides of the fence, also some companies that don’t know what side of the fence to move to so they’re just waiting. November is going to be very telling,” DEI consultant and Elevate Diversity founder Rhonda Moret told San José Spotlight.

An executive order issued by Trump near the end of his presidency banned federal government contractors, subcontractors and grantees from offering certain DEI training, describing it as “malign ideology.”

“Depending on who’s elected into office, we could see some (DEI) shifts one direction or the other. I understand why some organizations are just kind of waiting to see what happens with the election,” Moret said.

Silicon Valley companies created DEI programs after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the racial reckoning that followed.

Zoom, headquartered in San Jose, acknowledged in its 2024 impact report that 0% of its leadership is Black despite ongoing initiatives.

The company axed its internal DEI team amid broader layoffs earlier this year, The Washington Post reported, and Meta slashed its own teams by at least 50%. Meta’s most recent impact report published in 2022 showed just 2.4% of their tech employees were Black and 4.8% were Latino.

Representatives for Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

Documents reviewed by San José Spotlight show Zoom COO Aparna Bawa told employees earlier this year that the company recognizes it needs to change its DEI approach and plans to hire DEI firms to inform their future approach.

“Zoom is committed to DEI and ensuring its principles remain firmly rooted in our DNA across our entire company. We continue to partner with leading external experts to help inform our DEI programs and ensure we are utilizing best practices,” a Zoom spokesperson told San José Spotlight.

Google reported last year 5.6% of their employees are Black and 6.9% are Latino. Google’s data on LGBTQ+ employees also showed 7% of their workforce identified as such, while less than 1% identified as non-binary. CNBC recently reported Google cut internal teams and programs aimed at helping underrepresented talent, causing uproar from apprentices.

“To be absolutely clear, our commitment to our DEI work has not changed and we invest in many programs and partnerships,” a Google spokesperson told San José Spotlight.

Google recently committed more than $5 million to historically Black colleges and universities to help build a stronger pipeline to the tech industry for underrepresented talent, along with launching the Google for Startups Women Founders Fund to help women entrepreneurs.

From the top down

With tech cuts rippling Silicon Valley, San Jose State sociology professor emeritus Scott Myers-Lipton said programs aimed at empowering women and workers of color should be preserved.

A 2023 VC Human Capital Survey by Deloitte, the National Venture Capital Association and Venture Forward showed Black employees only made up about 5% of the venture capital workforce — up slightly from about 4% in 2020.

“Venture capital funding creates high tech jobs, but African Americans receive only 1% of the $20 billion provided annually to new tech startups, which leads to a lack of wealth creation,” said Scott Myers-Lipton, a retired San Jose State sociology professor. “Combine this with the limited access that African Americans, as well as other folks of color, have to middle and upper management positions in tech companies, and wealth creation is almost totally cut off.”

The 2024 Silicon Valley Pain Index, which highlights the region’s inequities, found Black tech workers between age 25 and 44 comprise 1% of the industry workforce, while Latino tech workers the same age make up 4%.

Reports like the Silicon Valley Pain Index rely on voluntary reporting by tech companies. Without a legal mandate requiring companies to report all their progress on DEI goals or employment diversity, the public could be in the dark about the lack of diversity in tech.

“They’re not going to say they’re discriminating based on race, but there are conditions and practices that are discouraging and not allowing for all folks to move into leadership positions,” Myers-Lipton said.

Diversity initiatives have been practiced and studied dating back to the 1960s when the U.S. adopted the first affirmative action laws for schools and equal treatment of all people in the workplace. The philosophies developed over the following decades into what we now know as DEI.

“We went from managing diversity to valuing diversity,” SJSU business professor and DEI expert Monica Gavino told San José Spotlight. “You are creating these great places to work where everybody flourishes, where people want to work and stay. So you are not losing your best talent and you become a magnet for employees.”

Joint Venture Silicon Valley President and CEO Russell Hancock said regardless of what happens in November, tech companies face pressure to balance the need to hire quickly with the time it takes to ensure a diverse workforce.

“It’s not easy, there’s nothing easy about it,” he said. “Our companies, they’re subjected to intense pressures to compete to have the very best talent. They need that talent yesterday and sometimes can’t go through a drawn out processes and take that extra time.”

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